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Google faces first investigation by its European lead authority over GDPR
- _eht 7y agoBrave, I wish I liked you more. As much as I am cautious with trusting Google, your motives and history are somehow more questionable to me.
- ListeningPie 7y agoWhat in Brave’s history and motives are questionable?
- blackbrokkoli 7y agoSome time ago there was a scandal because apparently they create profiles for content creators which aren't signed up on their platform and accept money on their behalf. Afterwards Brave spouted very dubious arguments with things like ominous legalese to HN comments with an "trust us, we're nerds too" vibe. From a cynical perspective, it looked a lot like smoke and mirrors from an entity currently sitting on a pile of money acquired by impersonating people.
- pergadad 7y agoIsn't this anyway their own tokens? So no matter whether the providers do have an own account or not, if they don't cash it out then there's no cost to brave. So its.just that they were incorrectly giving the impression that someone is getting paid?
- s_dev 7y agoI'm far more sceptical of Google. Brave's movitvation is to supply privacy compliant browser as an alternative to Chrome. Google's motivation is to sell ads and hoard data on people.
- tssva 7y agoBrave's motivation is to push people to use their browser in order to further their extortion based business model.
- s_dev 7y ago> Brave's motivation is to push people to use their browser in order to further their extortion based business model. Thats Google. Google store information on you -- Brave don't really have data centres of peoples search history and profile info. My big problem with Brave is -- it just simply isn't a good browser yet. It doesn't work properly with lots of sites I use e.g. teamwork.com
- prepend 7y agoWhat’s their extortion based business model? I thought their deal was they pay sites with their schrutebucks based on user monthly pay-in (ie, I pay $10/month, I spend 50% of my time on HN, therefore HN gets $5 minus Brave’s 30% or whatever).
- tssva 7y agoIf participation in the program was purely under completely voluntary terms then it would be fine but it isn't. Instead Brave extorts sites to participate in their program by blocking their current funding method and forcing Brave's terms upon them if they want to recover some of the lost revenue.
- iscrewyou 7y agoSounds like a court case waiting to happen...
- nizmow 7y agoYou can use Firefox.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- downandout 7y agoTheir motives here are not questionable. Everyone knows exactly what their motives are. Google makes Chrome, a competitor to Brave. Also, Brave’s whole schtick is that it is better on privacy than other browsers. So their motive to make this complaint was simple and self-serving: they are trying to take their competitor down and use the publicity from it to boost their business. This isn’t the first abuse of GDPR by a jealous competitor, and it won’t be the last. Intentionally or not, GDPR was designed in a way that will drive complaints and cross complaints by competitors large and small, across the world. As companies realize how easy it is to weaponize GDPR to impose significant defense costs on competitors at no cost to themselves, regardless of the legitimacy of their complaint, filing such complaints will become a competitive necessity.
- _eht 7y agoYou should learn more about Brave. Those were two large paragraphs full of ignorance.
- downandout 7y agoAre they not competing with Chrome? Also, you literally raised the exact same concern I did in another comment: ”Brave, I wish I liked you more. As much as I am cautious with trusting Google, your motives and history are somehow more questionable to me.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19990086 You seem to agree with me, at least when you aren’t replying to a comment of mine. Where is the disconnect here?
- yeppie 7y agoIt's a shame an otherwise interesting article is plastered with the author repeatedly trying to promote and self-congratulate himself, and take credit for something which has undoubtedly been reported by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Anyhow, I sincerely hope Google gets slapped with a huge fine, and that one day individual-user-targeted-ads will become illegal.
- Tade0 7y agoThere's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. I see this as an indirect way to solve the problem of tax havens, because little known fact: the money that goes to pay the fines effectively reduces the pool of EU member contributions, because it's distributed using the same method.
- anoncake 7y ago> There's a huge incentive for both EU and Google to have the latter just pay a fine every now and then and remain in business. For the EU, making a decision frequently means getting the consensus of 28 governments with sometimes very different ideologies. I don't think it's capable of plotting.
- Tade0 7y agoIndividual governments on the other hand are, and in this case their interests align.
- anoncake 7y agoSure. You have twenty-eight governments, each with multiple ministers. A mix of socialists, liberals, christian democrats and fascists. None of them value markets and low taxes (the difference between liberals and socialists is that the latter like red). They somehow trust each other to keep their conspiracy secret. Oh, and half the European Parliament is part of the plot as well. At the same time, they have serious problems agreeing on tax reform. Because somehow, their interests are only aligned when it comes to secretly taxing Google. Please take off your tinfoil hat. When the EU properly taxes Google, it will do so openly.
- nudq 7y agoLife is an eternal struggle between Good and Google
- mda 7y agoI would not classify Brave as anything good.
- luckylion 7y agoWhat bad have they done?
- mda 7y agoProbably just the rotten smell that comes from their business model.
- prepend 7y agoWhat do you find most stinky about their business model?
- drusepth 7y agoIt's built on telling others "hey guys, we think your business model is evil so we're just gonna turn it off -- if you want [a smaller portion of] that money you need to go through us to get it now" or you get nothing at all. It's kind of like walking into a store and saying, "I want this bag of chips but the way you're charging for it is evil. I'm going to eat it now, but if you want paid you can go across the street and get a money order from my mom in the car. Oh, and she'll pay what she thinks it's worth."
- solarkraft 7y agoTaking money in people's names and forwarding them what they feel like forwarding, for one.
- Ensorceled 7y ago
- mjfl 7y agoIn all likelihood Facebook and google will be able to adequately address any issues related to GDPR and judo throw the regulation into allowing them to become further entrenched by suppressing any competition.
- omeid2 7y agoI think it is probable that big players would lawyer-up their way out but GDPR has little impact on honest competition, sure, if you want to join the dodgy-club without deep pockets and a legal department, it is gonna a bit harder, but tough cookies.
- isostatic 7y agoAs long as you put up a half-page notice about those cookies :D
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoI think you underestimate the EU, if Microsoft couldn't escape their wrath back in 2007 I'm pretty sure Facebook and Google won't today. The EU is even stronger than it was in those days, too.
- londons_explore 7y agoGoogle will argue that while this data is intimate (religion, age, personal preferences), it is not personally identifiable. I have access to one of these data feeds of bid requests, and for the most part, they're right. Pick a random entry and even after hours of searching and correlating with the other data we have on file, it's unlikely I'd be able to identify exactly who it was (ie. Their name and address) on that website. Some requests totally are identify-able though, for example if the user goes on to click one of our ads, buy something, and give us their postal address. In the eyes of the law, we have broken the rules there by re-identifying previously anonymous data. While I think Google is technically in the right here, they're gonna loose big time because they're a foreign company and don't have much love with the public.
- levosmetalo 7y ago> Some requests totally are identify-able though, for example if the user goes on to click one of our ads, buy something, and give us their postal address. In the eyes of the law, we have broken the rules there by re-identifying previously anonymous data. You are either compliant or not. Claiming that you are 90% GDPR compliant still makes you non-compliant. > While I think Google is technically in the right here, No, they are not technically right, because even being 99% right makes you 1% wrong, which in case of Google would affect 70M people. > they're gonna loose big time because they're a foreign company and don't have much love with the public. The love of the public doesn't have any legal influence, and being a foreign company doesn't mean that company can play by it's own or their home country rules. By the same logic, one could argue that Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank and Monsanto got fined hefty only because they are foreign companies, and that they would be either not fined, or fined much less if they were US based. Oh, wait ...
- matt4077 7y ago> they're gonna loose big time because they're a foreign company I think it's somewhat irresponsible to throw out accusations this big without even feeling the need to offer any evidence for them. FWIW I once summed up the various fines (anti-trust etc.) doled out by the EU by country/continent. It turned out that US companies were, collectively, fined slightly less than their share of economic activity in the EU, while Asian companies were fined more and EU companies were about level. This corresponds rather well with a non-corrupt process largely blind to companies' nationality, assuming that US companies are rather well-regulated in the US compared to Asian companies. I haven't done the reverse for US fines of European companies. But, subjectively, the cases that made the news (mostly VW and Deutsche Bank) gel rather nicely with my (Germany-based) impression of companies with malignant corporate culture and do not require any nationalistic motivation to explain. I know it may seem like a minor point in this context. But if we always assume all institutions are corrupt, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Institutions such as the court system and, more generally, the rule of law, are the reason we (some of us) can enjoy life in peace, and shouldn't be torn down just by empty cynicism.
- EugeneOZ 7y agoBrave is a product built on Chromium - work of many Google engineers (mostly). And still they call Google an "evil behemoth corporation". And now this article - pathetic example of black PR and double-dealing.
- noir_lord 7y agoIf you go back far enough you find KHTML. KHTML -> WebKit (Apple) -> Blink (Google) -> Chromium. So while Chromium is undoutably the work of many Google employees it's not entirely the work of Google employees which is one of the reasons it's licensed the way that it is.
- mda 7y agoI think all things considered, today Chromium is probably 90% Google engineering. There is almost no Khtml code left and big chunks of webkit code are heavily modified and rewritten. Also, rendering engine is not the browser.
- EugeneOZ 7y agoThat's why I wrote "mostly". And it doesn't deny the fact that Brave is built on product, created and paid by corporation they hate and blame so much.
- tssva 7y agoEven worse Brave the company is built on an extortion based business model and calls Google an "evil behemoth corporation".
- pjc50 7y agoThe master's tools are required to render the master's house.
- matt4077 7y agoCould we change the link to something that isn't self-promoting? https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635898/google-gdpr-probe-complaint-ireland-dcp-europe https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18635898/google-gdpr-prob... is one link Google News turns up.
- Proven 7y agoClueless morons from the EU are scoring big in the court of public opinion - “the government protects us and at the same shakes down the rich Yanks, oh yeah!”
- alt_f4 7y agoah, a classical govt shakedown in progress
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sctb 7y agoCould you please work on increasing the information-to-inflammation ratio of your comments? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alt_f4 7y agoAlright, here's the timeline EU is not happy that American tech companies aren't paying enough in revenue to the state. Furthermore, they are also helping spread "fake news" that are helping topple the people in power and electing the opposition parties. "Fake", of course, are news that doesn't work towards the goals of the people in charge. American tech companies are using legal structures and rules that are completely legal in the EU and help move revenue to places with minimal withholding. Of course, many other businesses use the same rules, including ones that are backing the people in power. So, the EU does not want to reform the rules where big corps can get out of paying their fair share, but instead institutes GDPR and Copyright reform. Both rules are designed to beat American tech companies into compliance with the people in charge. Or else, endless investigations and billion dollar fines follow. This is achieved under the guise of "privacy" (oh, the privacy of a cookie banner) and "author rights" (upload filters). This way the EU govts achieve their goal of censoring the information flow on the big platforms, all the while raising additional revenue that eventually can be used to fund overpriced government tender contracts that are awarded to well-connected companies. In other words, a shakedown. How's that for information-to-inflammation ratio?
- mrunkel 7y agoIt's still a rather aggressive take on the GDPR. The GDPR has nothing to do with taxation and would be a terrible system of taxation. GDPR is about protecting data. If it was just about taxing big US tech companies, why would they target their own businesses? They could have easily have carved out exceptions for that. The whole tax haven schemes are being addressed through other measures, including the proposed per transaction taxes in lieu of income taxes.
- nudq 7y ago> hundreds of billions of times a day How lucky for them the EU won't treat them the way RIAA persecuted file sharers. Hundreds of billions of violations every day, each single one a separate "count"!
- ianamartin 7y agoThere's a lot of stuff to dislike about the nuts and bolts of the GDPR. But I do wish that the U.S. would move in the general direction of protecting user data instead of the incredibly vague and stupid calls for "BREAK UP BIG TECH!" All of the political stuff that's happening here blithely assumes that the problems with Apple, Google, and Facebook are pretty much the same and can be solved in the same way. There's a fundamental approach here of basically, "don't get too successful." I'd rather see them approached specifically and recognize that they each present very different challenges. One of the biggest for ad-driven companies is that they're successful because of the way they use data. It's not really about how big they are. If you can regulate how people are allowed to make money off of user data effectively, that solves a huge part of the problem. There's another part of the puzzle about what exactly it means to be an anti-competitive monopoly in the modern era, but I'm actually kind of okay with that being litigated for now. The system moves slowly, but it is moving. And for people saying the current system can't account for new technology, it's worth realizing that people do recognize the need for change, and the Supreme Court just recognized that old rules about how things work need to change.
- anoncake 7y ago> There's a fundamental approach here of basically, "don't get too successful." Of course. We want companies to compete, we don't want them to win because then there is no functioning market anymore.
- inlined 7y agoDisclaimer: I work at Google and did some GDPR verification on some products, but I’m not a lawyer and will try to avoid legal speculation. I worked with the advertising team but not on it; my impression of those folks is that they took legal responsibilities _very_ seriously. We even had to make new controls in Firebase for you to enable sharing your Firebase analytics data with your Firebase Functions. I’m curious which kind of party Brave is accusing Google of being (Controller or Processor). I’m also curious what kind of “leak” Brave is accusing Google of making. The advertiser could certainly filter for some specific terms, but not PII. If you get a large group, differential privacy et. al. should protect the individual and protect a leak. There’s some interesting theoretical attacks in the threads but they involved a host site asking for the PII after the ad campaign. Do any attorneys want to comment who the Controller and Processor would be in this situation? Do any multi-site owners want to comment on whether any advertising UserIDs are even shared across sites, or are they salted per recipient?
- inlined 7y agoA bit more digging. The google_user_id field is described a bit more here: https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/cookie-guide https://developers.google.com/authorized-buyers/rtb/cookie-g... From what I can tell it looks like advertisers who already have user IDs can use this in their ad campaign but all google_ fields are stripped from ad redirects.
- kache_ 7y agoIt hurts me imaging the amount of paper required to clear something like this.
- eoinmurray92 7y agoThe UK currently has larger complaint numbers than France or Germany [1] at around 6,000-16,000 each which is weird, but it does show that many people are taking individual privacy rights seriously [1] https://kyso.io/eoin/gdpr-complaints-for-various-eu-countries-so-far https://kyso.io/eoin/gdpr-complaints-for-various-eu-countrie...
- skybrian 7y agoI wonder if anyone can explain more about how ad bidding works? Does information from bidders (websites) go beyond the ad exchange? Do ad exchanges log bids? How does information leakage happen, and what gets leaked? (Please don't speculate if you don't know.)
- marcrosoft 7y agoThis is another example of the EU trying to "tax" US companies through fines. If you disagree with how Google uses your data _you have a choice_, stop using Google!
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoBut you don't have a choice. Google's advertising systems track you regardless of whether you use Google. You have to avoid any site which uses Google advertising.
- danielscrubs 7y agoThat’s never been our (socialist) way. That’s the USA way. The governments will go after companies no matter what legalese they get the customers to sign if it’s the best interest of the citizens. You could flip the whole thing: why doesn’t Google just ban EU customers? Just try to understand that we are culturally different from you guys and try to keep in mind both perspectives as if Google was not an American company.
- glenndebacker 7y agoYeah there is just one problem... European companies are also getting fines when they don’t play by the rules. And in some cases very hefty fines... The whole “US taxing” argument is produced by people who would know how ridiculous that claim is if they would look further than US borders.
- pergadad 7y agoSorry but this is a very uninformed comment. 1) there's no one "taxing" anyone 2) this is not a judgement, its the start of an investigation into rule violation 3) this investigation was launched after a formal complaint by another company. If Google finds others in violation it can equally file complaints 4) it's not the EU doing the investigation, but rather the Irish data protection authority. Please read the information closely rather than just assume it confirms whatever preconceptions you bring to the table.
- cosmodisk 7y agoJust today attended a massive conference where they were showing how a pregnant customer goes on an real estate website,browses for a few properties,then goes on a website that sells cots,browses a few of them and gets served a customised ad from a bank.Once clicked on the ad,it opens the banking app with some details prefilled and ready to submit an application for a mortgage.I understanding I'm in this CRM industry and benefitting from it heavily, however this is just a way to far...